Chart of the Day: The Stock Market and Tech Innovations

Today's Chart of the Day from Kitces.com, "10 Charts To Address Concerns On 2026 Geopolitical Conflict," presents an interesting timeline of market growth and innovation eras.

For the past several years, AI has been the main driver of market excitement, but the conversation is starting to shift from simply building it to figuring out who is actually making money from it.

Notable breakthroughs in technology tend to start with heavy infrastructure spending, move into broader adoption, and eventually deliver real productivity gains that lift the broader economy.

We’ve seen this pattern before with railroads, electricity, and the internet. Today, massive investment surrounding AI echoes that early infrastructure phase, while investors are increasingly focused on earnings, valuations, and real-world use cases. The chart reinforces that innovation has consistently fueled long‑term market growth, even though leadership within the market evolves as each technology matures.